After an extensive national search, the University of the Virgin Islands Research and Technology Park (RTPark) Board of Directors selected Dr. Gillian Marcelle as the new executive director. She also holds a faculty appointment in the UVI School of Business. Marcelle’s contract began Jan. 5.
“The UVI RT Park Board of Directors welcomes Dr. Gillian Marcelle. We look forward to her knowledge, commercial and global experience and leadership of the park as it continues to make contributions to the social and economic development in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” said Edward Thomas, chairman of the RTPark Board of Directors.
Marcelle is a senior executive, economic development policy advisor and scholar with more than 20 years of global experience. She trained as an economist at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, and the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Germany. She also earned an MBA at George Washington University and read for her doctorate in Science and Technology Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), a preeminent research institute based at Sussex University (UK).
Prior to joining UVI, Marcelle served as the head of the Centre for Science Technology and Innovation Indicators (CESTII), a specialist research center, which is a project of the South African Human Sciences Research Council. She also held an appointment as a visiting research scholar at the Tata Centre for Technology and Design, a project of the MIT Energy Initiative, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she continues to have research affiliations, including with the renowned Science, Technology Policy (STP) Program.
Over the years, Marcelle has established her reputation as a leader and change agent in the areas of innovation management and policy. From 2008-2014, she was a tenured associate professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Wits Business School, and served as the assistant dean of Postgraduate Affairs for the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits University, in Johannesburg, South Africa. In that role, she provided academic leadership for programs to develop research, management and policy making capacity in science technology and innovation, and she led the design and development of an interdisciplinary Masters of Management in Innovation.
The new executive director of RTPark combines her academic achievements with commercial experience and a track-record in consulting, investment banking and leading project teams in large development agencies. Marcelle has also managed her own economic development advisory practice with clients including national governments, multilateral bodies, cities, companies and non-governmental organizations. Some of those are:
• World Bank/IFC, European Union/African, Caribbean, Pacific
• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
• UNIFEM – The Women’s Fund at the United Nations
• United Nations University Institute for New Technologies
• United Nations Development Programme
• United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development
• International Telecommunication Union
• UN-Division for the Advancement of Women
• International Development Research Centre
• ABANTU for Development, Department of Trade and Industry (UK)
Other clients include the Republic of Angola, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the South African Department of Science and Technology, the Innovation Hub, the City of Johannesburg, Digital Links International and MTN, a South Africa-based telecommunications company.
Her finance background includes equity and capital markets experience with JP Morgan Chase, mergers and acquisitions, and development finance with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.
Marcelle also has considerable experience in global high-level advocacy including serving as a member on the Board of the United Nations Information and Communications Technologies Task Force at the invitation of the then-Secretary General Kofi Annan. She has also served as a member of the International Advisory Panel on ICT4Development and founded a global advocacy network, the WSIS Gender Caucus, which was active in the World Summit on Information Society.
These skills, experience and specialist knowledge will be put at the disposal of UVI’s Research and Technology Park to move toward, realizing an ambitious agenda of making a contribution to social and economic development in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
